A World of Distractions

How many times are you distracted from what you’re working on in a typical day? What is the longest amount of time you can concentrate without your attention being diverted? What are the things that distract you the most.

Yesterday, I was talking with my buddy Brad about the many distractions that we are provide with in our high-tech world. So I have decided to compile a list of all the things that have distracted me this morning, before noon.

1. Upon first logging on to my computer, Gmail Notifier let me know that I had an important email to read about color options for this season’s kickball tee shirts. Please God don’t let them be red.

2. Browse iTunes for the perfect early morning album to listen to. Ahh, Feist, that should work. Her voice is amazing.

3. Glance at the iLike application that is attached to my iTunes. Oh, how interesting, there are other people in the world listening to Feist at this exact moment.

4. Open my Outlook. See all of the work emails that I have to attend to. Answer some questions, get some updates. Now I’m ready to start actually working.

5. Wait, let’s see if anything happened on MySpace in the past 24 hours. Nope. I don’t think any of my friends use MySpace anymore.

6. Google Chat, oh Google Chat. How I love thee. However, you are a large productivity inhibitor. But how can I not click over when I hear that unmistakable noise that let’s me know someone wants to tell me something?

7. While in the middle of working on a client proposal, Outlook shows me a preview of a new email. I must immediately stop writing the proposal and check that email.

8. Wonder how many people read my blog yesterday. Check blog stats. For the record, it was 24 yesterday, and 48 the day before.

9. Check a few interesting sites. These consist of 365 Shirts, Wired, iMedia Connection, and of course, all of the RSS feeds on my Google homepage.

10. Write blog entry. I have a meeting in 20 minutes, so I might as well get this in now.

I once read an article that said that constantly being interrupted at work actually temporarily lowers your IQ more than does smoking pot. Now, I don’t know if this is true, but I certainly feel less intelligent during days of constant distractions.

Since reading comments make blogging so much more enjoyable, I’d be very interested to hear what your main distractions are at work. Share them with us so we can enjoy some of these new distractions.